Subjectivity and Violence: A Dynamic Framework

JIACHENG LI

Are rape, murder, or domestic abuse violence? Most would agree they are. Physical force and coercion are directly imposed upon the victims against their will, which often results in severe somatic, or physical, and mental damages. Are sexism or racism violence? Many would say, yes. A certain population becomes the target of attack or discrimination, their rights to equality are denied or alienated by others, and they enjoy fewer opportunities and face more barriers in pursuit of their life goals. Is abortion violence? That answer is probably contested. Some argue that women are entitled to full control of their own bodies, so abortion is not violence; others believe that violence exists in the action to prevent a human life from coming to earth. The answers are different because violence is rarely a concept that exists independently of human subjectivity. Rather, it is deeply built into our value systems and social consensus. The reason we generally recognize rape or racism as violence is because the notion that everyone has rights to life, liberty, and equal opportunities has developed to represent our fundamental values, whereas there is no such consensus when it comes to issues like abortion. To conceptualize violence, our formula has to be empirical rather than metaphysical, dynamic rather than static, and interactional rather than separational. This paper proposes a dynamic model of violence in light of the evolution of human subjectivity. It adopts Johan Galtung’s framework of structural violence and incorporates the concepts of slow violence and violence of positivity developed by Rob Nixon and by Byung-Hul Han. Inserting subjectivity into the formulation of violence not only helps us detect violence in its often overlooked and imperceptible forms, but also sheds light on the evolution of violence over time and suggests free, inclusive discourses are essential to approach and address violence.

Galtung defines violence “as the cause of the difference between the potential and the actual” (168). Violence exists when humans are “being influenced so

that their actual somatic and mental realizations are below their potential realizations” (Gatlung 168). The potentiality is represented as “what it could be” as opposed to “what it is”. For example, war is violence because the loss of lives and realizations associated with those lives could potentially have been avoided by the prevention of war. Poverty is also violence because, for example, the inaccessibility of education, and inability to fulfill life potential through being educated, could have been prevented by opportunities provided under better economic conditions. Galtung’s definition enables us to be aware of not only violence that causes somatic injuries, but also the distribution of power and resources underlying the structures that prevent people from the realization of their potential (171). Expanding on Galtung’s definition, three questions arise so as to fully grasp its implications: What is “the potential”? What is “the actual”? And how do “the potential” and “the actual” evolve and transform over time?

The potentiality framed in Galtung’s construction of violence is not decided by universal, metaphysical doctrines but by certain humanly constructed value systems. Galtung recognizes the obscurity associated with the meaning of “potential realization” and resorts to “consensus” as the ultimate guide: if what needs to be realized is fairly consensual, then the inhibition of its realization should be perceived as violence (168). For example, Galtung points out that we could raise the question of violence if “the level of literacy is lower than what it could have been”, but not if “the level of Christianity is lower than what it could have been” because the importance of the former is recognized almost anywhere but the latter is held to be highly controversial (169). To add to that point, “the potential” based on consensus is not a static concept but rather constantly evolves over time. For example, black people were widely believed to be “inferior” to white people in 18th century America, and therefore society did not generally regard the miserable conditions and humiliating status of black communities as a form of violence. However, from a retroactive viewpoint, we would immediately recognize that the so-called “consensus” in the past excluded the experiences and feelings of black people themselves, and their peripheralized status was obviously below their potential levels of realization as human beings. Clearly, an element of subjectivity underlies the

concept of potentiality, which evolves across time with the inclusion of new voices and is transformed by social consensus.

However, sometimes consensus over human and social potential can be totally missing. Byung-Hul Han theorizes “the violence of positivity,” which manifests itself in the form of “overachievement, overproduction, overcommunication, hyperattention, and hyperactivity” under the modern capitalist order (2). Through the self-exploiting process described by Han, we ourselves become simultaneously the perpetrators and the victims of violence, in which circumstance a consensus over potentiality is inconceivable. Because we ourselves set “the potential,” which is characterized by “overpotential”, our aspired level of realization imposes a form of violence on ourselves (104). Thus, violence converts itself into the most subjective form – it arises from the subject herself – and therefore becomes unidentifiable. However, Han’s discovery of this internalized form of violence itself plays the role of bringing attention to our modern lifestyle and shaping the consensus: his discovery compels us to question whether what we tirelessly pursue to reach our “potential realization” in modern life is right. This case demonstrates the subjective and dynamic aspects of the concept of potentiality under Galtung’s definition of violence.

Besides “the potential,” “the actual” matters not only in terms of what the reality is but also how the reality is being subjectively received. For example, Rob Nixon detects the imperceptibility of certain violent processes that he calls “slow violence,” where real damages of violence are concealed across the dimension of time. Nixon observes that the events of 9/11 make efforts to raise awareness about climate change much harder because the terrorist attack “reinforced a spectacular, immediately sensational, and instantly hyper-visible image of what constitutes a violent threat” (12). Public sentiment was concentrated on “the fiery spectacle of the collapsing towers” as the “definitive image of violence,” which contrasted with the threat of climate change that is “incremental, exponential, and far less sensationally visible” (Nixon 13). The invisibility of the climate crisis by no means reduces its destructive effects on vulnerable populations, but a lack of public awareness of the direness of the situation and consequently

government inaction because of the actuality’s imperceptible nature results in exacerbation of such climate violence.

Moreover, the actuality could be manipulated by those in positions to alter and benefit from how society perceives violence. In his elaboration of the concept of slow violence, Nixon discovers that environmentalists find themselves in confrontation with “well-funded, well-organized interests that invest heavily in manufacturing and sustaining a culture of doubt around the science of slow violence” (39). He calls people funded by big corporations or political interest groups to spread misinformation and confusions that counter established scientific facts “the cultural bewilders” and “disseminators” (Nixon 40). Their careful manipulation of public opinion obscures and deepens the inaccessibility of the actuality of “slow violence” and thereby intensifies the damages of such violence on vulnerable populations. In fact, Marxists have been using the concept of “false consciousness” to describe ways in which the capitalist ideological structures mislead proletariats by shrouding the exploitative relationships between capitalists and workers. The manipulation of information and creation of a misperceived actuality reaches its most extreme and developed form in what Han describes as the “violence of positivity” characterized by self-exploitation (8). Misinformation campaigns transform the victims of violence into contributors to the structure that perpetuates violence. The control of information internalizes itself into the norms accepted by us so that we become our own “bewilders”. In that case, in the guise of freedom under the neoliberal system, the consensus is shaped as excessive forms of positivity and the actuality becomes unified with the perceived potential as overachievement, which expresses itself to the most intensified extent as depression and suicide (Nixon 122, Han 8). Clearly, how the actuality is subjectively received has the power not only to exacerbate violence but also to constitute violence in itself.

Thus, we have illustrated what the potential is and what the actual is by adopting Galtung’s definition of violence. The potentiality establishes its existence in the social sphere in the form of the ideal level of realization based on consensus, which is fluid and in constant change across time. The actuality exists both in the form of the actual reality and the received reality,

and how the actuality is received significantly affects our awareness of and response to violence. In some cases, the actual reality of damage or “underrealization” is overshadowed by our focus on more immediate, dramatic forms of violence. Slow violence’s imperceptible nature results in inaction in response to violence and the exacerbation of the situation. Moreover, the received reality can be manipulated with private agendas to conceal the real scope of the actual reality. Both the potentiality and the actuality are highly intertwined with human subjectivity, and their dynamic positions determine our understanding of and reactions to what we define as violence and the evolution of its meanings.

Information is the key factor that significantly shapes the consensus over both what the potential is and what the actual is. On the one hand, the existence of misinformation campaigns implies that the developmental trajectory of the concept of violence is not unidirectional, since public opinions could possibly flow in directions that exacerbate existent violence structures. On the other hand, the disclosure of scientific evidence that, for example, corroborates human-engendered climate change, is another form of information that could help raise awareness of environmental violence. Moreover, information includes not only objective knowledge of reality but also personalized and individualized voices. The voices of ethnic minorities, women, and other groups whose voices were largely unheard in history are now more expressed and gathering momentum: this is also a form of information that both reveals what the actuality for them is and reflects upon what the potentiality should be.

The concept of violence is also expanding. Once the consensus is formed, it has the power to generate public discussions and debates that can potentially produce new consensus over the content of “the potential” and “the actual”. Society discovers the notion of violence through the work of cultural, intellectual and technological dynamics that produce these consensuses. Galtung expands the conception of violence by adding to its composition the latent structures that deliver violent actions; Nixon particularly focuses on the imperceptible and invisible form of violence that transforms its structural positions in relation to its victims through time, movement, and change; and

Han develops the concept of self-imposed violence under the structure that pursues excessive positivity, which forces us to reflect on what we perceive as the normal way of life in the name of modernity. These intellectual works are themselves diverse and influential expansions of the terrain of how violence is understood.

This descriptive framework not only places violence in the matrix of human subjectivity conditioned by social consensus and information, but also carries implications as to how we address violence in the real world. With information and social consciousness as its focal point, this model advocates for free discussions and removal of informational barriers as ways to promote understanding of violence. Moreover, it warns against complacency involved in the production of any theory or definition of violence that claims to be complete or the formation of any social consensus that asserts itself to be advanced and progressive, since real violence is never defined by abstract formulations or doctrines but by dynamic interactions of both social consciousness and the individualized voices of concrete human beings. The conceptualization of violence should be an endeavor to understand real human suffering. Just as human beings themselves and their associated behaviors and consciousness are complex, dynamic, and ever-expanding, the project to resolve violence has to take a form no less diversified, human-centered and self-reflective.

WORKS CITED

Galtung, Johan. “Violence, Peace, and Peace Research.” Journal of Peace Research, vol. 6, no. 3, 1969, pp. 167–191. www.jstor.org/stable/422690.

Han, Byung-Chul. Topology of Violence. Translated by Amanda DeMarco, MIT

Press, 2018.

Nixon, Rob. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Harvard

University Press, 2011.